Travel, at its best, is braided together with life itself

“All I know is that I want to live somewhere I’ll have to relearn everything: how to cross the street, how to order coffee, how to deal with people whose modes of thinking are utterly, intriguingly foreign to my own. I want to be uncomfortable, to be an outsider not just in my own mind but in the eyes of everyone who glances at my awkward, bumbling self. I want to figure it out all over again, to savor the small good moments, and I want those tiny triumphs (and inevitable failures) to mark my days, and I want them to add up, over the years and the miles, to a far, far larger victory — that of experience, memory, and language over the unstoppable decay of time. To be clear: this is not wanderlust. Travel is not something separate from the rest of my life, something I need to “get back to.” For me, I’ve come to understand, travel and life are so intricately braided together that they cannot be teased apart.”
–Matt Gross